As long as artists have been depicting ani¬mals and human figures in their drawings they have been fascinated with the possibility of recording action. But even those primitive masters of observation who painted bison and deer on the walls of their Altamira caves most have raged at their tools; at best, they could only suggest action with static lines and colors on a cold immovable wall. Through succeeding centuries that same immovable wall has set a limit upon artists' creative powers. New tools were invented, better materials produced, improved methods and technics employed. Yet prior to the invention of moving pictures, artists could only express movement by the arrangement of iii, shapes and colors with compositional skill.
Through the painting of long friezes, large mural decorations, designs encircling vases, and scroll paint-ings they attempted to depict continuity of action. (The comic strip of today is merely a new application of a time-worn principle.) Ingenious though these devices were, they scarcely anticipated the graphic revolution of the moving picture.
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